The sustainability of Life on Planet Earth

July 22, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, Mother God, this morning we name you and hope that those listening are entertained by the metaphor and not caught by it. Language is an odd thing; it seems the more education that someone has the more often they are snagged by the very words that would serve them. Saying precisely what we mean has its place in science and architecture, but the vagueness of metaphor may allow us to journey places that would not be journeyed to if, in fact, we were drawing plans or writing formulae.

The Mystery to which I usually pray is not served by preciseness. The mystery of metaphor is the same as the mystery of story. Suspending disbelief is the crux of journeying into the story of the divine. As we suspend disbelief – and who of us does not have some disbelief – we are then able to engage the right side of our brains and enter into relationship with the character of our imaginations. This morning we imagine a world that does not operate by greed, we imagine a world in which those with power and money search for those in need, this morning we imagine a world in which honor is spread among all peoples, a world in which the hungry are only so because they have not been discovered by those who have more to eat than necessary.

Yes, this is fanciful, and dream-like, but remember now that everything that we see that is made by humans and human culture was at first an intention and an idea. We speak of the naturalness of nature while deriding those things made by humans, but how different is the wasp nest from the home. Both are containers in which those living there find meaning.

If the human species is to continue upon this earth, then the human species must begin to dream dreams that do not include gluttony of greed. The human species must begin to dream dreams that recoil in revulsion at the idea that we would kill one of our own because they had killed. We must begin to dream dreams that spark in us the better angels of our natures, as those better angels turn from the horror, the horror of the world that we now live in.

In 500 million years the sun will go out. In this sense all is for naught. In 500 millions years earth will be like Venus varying in temperature from equator to poles by only 7 degrees and the mean temperature hovering around 690 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point the greatest of what we have created, Shakespearian drama, modern medicine, acupuncture, philosophy, theology, the beauties and wonders of this planet Earth will be gone and forgotten. But is this any more reason for despair than the simple fact that whatever we do personally for our significant others and those children that we raise together, all those things are for naught in the light of our eventual demise?

Death does not erase the love that we share, any more than the red giant of our sun will erase what has transpired on this thin layer of life, our beloved earth, our mother and sustainer. We would and do recoil in horror when we see that there are those who would give their mothers up for a profit, yet we allow the soulless corporations of this our beloved planet to treat our mother as if she were a whore. There will come a time when the heads of major corporations will stand trial as greed criminals, as murderers of our mother.

My prayer today is that these proceedings will occur before mother lies on her deathbed and before we have let our own greed and culpability run rampant just in order for us to get a final slice of the greed pie. We must realize now that any money siphoned from the soulless corporations that now rape the earth is blood money. Help us to see, Divine Spirit that the money that is made from this blood is money that is made from the blood of our own children. In ravaging the earth we are, in essence incesting our own children and their futures.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and sometimes this goes by the name of Jesus, sometimes Buddha, sometimes Allah, sometimes the Great Spirit, sometimes Pan, sometimes I AM THAT I AM, but always the name of everything that is holy is, precisely, everything.

Amen

Sermon:

Boomers and Stickers-the sustainability of life on planet earth

Wallace Stegner knew, both from his personal experience and from his long study of his region, that the two cultures of the American West are not those of the sciences and arts, but rather those of the two human kinds that he called “boomers” and “stickers,” the boomers being “those who pillage and run,” and the stickers” “those who settle, and love the life they have made and the place they have made it in” (Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, p. xxii).

This applies to our country as a whole, and maybe to all of Western civilization in modern times. The first boomers were the oceanic navigators of the European Renaissance. They were gold seekers. All boomers have been gold seekers. They are would-be Midases who want to turn all things into gold: plants and animals, trees, food and drink, soil and water and air, life itself, even the future.

The sticker theme has so far managed to survive, and to preserve in memory and even in practice the ancient human gifts of reverence, fidelity, neighborliness, and stewardship. But unquestionably the dominant theme of modern history has been that of the boomer. It is no surprise that the predominant arts and sciences of the modern era have been boomer arts and boomer sciences.

The collaboration of boomer science with the boomer mentality of the industrial corporations has imposed upon us a state of virtually total economy in which it is the destiny of every creature (humans not excluded) to have a price and to be sold. In a total economy, all materialism creatures, and ideas become commodities interchangeable and disposable. People become commodities along with everything else.

Only such an economy could seek to impose upon the world’s abounding geographic and creaturely diversity the tyranny of technological and genetic monoculture. Only in such an economy could “life forms” be patented, or the renewability of nature and culture be destroyed. Monsanto’s aptly named “terminator gene” – which implanted in seed sold by Monsanto, would cause the next generation of seed to be sterile – is as grave an indicator of totalitarian purpose as a concentration camp.

The second reading is from Henry N. Weiman’s book, The Source of Human Good.

Jesus engaged in intercommunication with a little group of disciples with such depth and potency that the organization of their several personalities was broken down and they were remade. They became new men, and the thought and feeling of each got across to the others. It was not merely the thought and feeling of Jesus that got across. That was not the most important thing. The important thing was that the thought and feeling of the least and lowliest got across to the others and the others to him. Not something handed down to them from Jesus but something rising up out of their midst in creative power was the important thing.

It was not something Jesus did. It was something that happened when he was present like a catalytic agent. It was as if he was a neutron that started a chain reaction of creative transformation. Something about this man Jesus broke the atomic exclusiveness of those individuals so that they were deeply and freely receptive and responsive each to the other. He split the atom of human egoism, not by psychological tricks, not by intelligent understanding, but simply by being the kind of person he was. Thus there arose in this group of disciples a miraculous mutual awareness and responsiveness toward the needs and interests of one another.

But this was not all; Something else followed from it. The thought and feeling, let us say the meanings, thus derived by each from the other, were integrated with what each had previously acquired. Thus each was transformed, lifted to a higher level of human fulfillment. Each became more of a mind and a person, with more capacity to understand to appreciate, to act with power and insight; for this is the way human personality is generated and magnified and life rendered more nobly human.

Introduction:

Perhaps you think that this sort of being lifted to a higher level of human fulfillment by Jesus was something that might have been possible if you lived in the time of Jesus and had been one of his disciples.

Well, let me take you back to October the 2nd of 2006, a Monday to the town of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.

At 9:51AM Eastern Standard Time Charles Carl Roberts IV, entered the West Nickel Mines School, a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Roberts ordered the teacher and three female friends and their children out of the classroom. Then he ordered the male students out. Nine-year-old Emma Fisher, who had just started to learn English hadn’t understood the gunman’s orders and she followed her brother out when he left. He tied the girls up with flexible plastic ties and shot all ten girls – five of them died, and five lived. All of this we know and are accustomed to, in a sense, in this society of senseless violence, but what we were not prepared for, and what points to the fact that the transformation that Henry N. Weiman speaks about in his book, The Source of Human Good, is still with us is what happened next.

When the Amish made their way in one of their funeral processions past the home of the family of Charles Carl Roberts IV, they waved friendly like to the relatives and family of the man that had killed their children.

And then the food started coming. The Amish were taking food to the family, the wife and three children of the man who had killed members of their community.

How can this be explained?

An Amish midwife who had delivered several of the girls who had been murdered and who had taken food herself to the family of the murderer put it this way; “This is possible if you have Christ in your heart.”

In his book, Sustainability and Spirituality, Dr. John Carroll argues that sustainability of necessity is a conversion experience. It can’t be something as simple as recycling; it would have to change not only how we do things, but also why we do things. In order to find models of how this might be accomplished we must look, Dr. Carroll says, “to places, locations, people who put their faith in places other than within the dominant value system.” The Amish in this instance seem to be a perfect example.

This past Wednesday at Noon I was invited to be on KOOP Radio. Along with Host, David Kobierowski, I was on with Diane Miller Of Envision Central Texas, Rosie Salinas of the Austin Police Department and our own First Church member and civil rights lawyer, Tim Mahoney. The topic of discussion was how do you get community out of their air-conditioned homes, away from their computers, televisions and I-pods and into the streets to either protest or celebrate.

For an issue to force of out of ourselves into the public arena it mean that, that issue must touch us vitally. One of the reasons protests against the war in

Iraq haven’t been as effective as they were during the Vietnam War is there is no draft. Most of the people of this country haven’t been affected at all by this war. After all we have a President who after 9/11 advised the nation to do what – go shopping!

I’m about to celebrate 28 years of sobriety. I wouldn’t have quit drinking if I hadn’t finally got to on a cellular level that my life was in the balance. And what was the most startling portion of the experience of getting sober? Seeing that I wasn’t alone in my suffering. Seeing that there was a community of others who suffered just as I did. Alcohol brought me to my knees, but it was the community of sober – once drunk alcoholic sisters and brothers – that lifted me back up to my feet again.

It is my opinion that modern technology, ipods, iphones, the Internet, 150 cable channels these all help to atomize society driving us into our own private world from which we text message and email other islands of existence. Technology in this worldview is supportive of ego and ego is suspicious of community. In John Carroll’s book, Spirituality and Sustainability he says that any talk of sustainability is merely superficial when our society and that of every major industrialized nation in the world is based upon fossil fuels. To become sustainable a conversion experience is needed.

The kind of conversion experience we’re talking about here – basically to change the way the world is run – any and all efforts in such a revolutionary conversion would mean that everything we did, thought, wrote about and planned would, of necessity, be counter-cultural. Find out where the culture is headed and go ye therefore in the opposite direction.

Jesus was a revolutionary catalyst. It wasn’t what Jesus did that was amazing, it’s how he affected the small band of disciples that surrounded him. He listened to them, he heard them with his heart and the least of these got just as much attention as the greatest. From the doubts of Thomas to the rock of Peter they had all been heard. And then an odd thing happened. They started listening to one another. They grew from a band of separate atomized individuals to the Disciple of Jesus. And amazingly their concern for the twelve turned out onto the world. Jesus sent them out into the world to announce the coming of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is here, now, and the vehicle for realizing this is love. The answer to where is the Kingdom of God is in loving, caring and reaching past yourself to those around you. Not waiting for your life to begin, but beginning the life you’ve already been given.

We’ll get back out onto the streets with our joys and concerns when we realize that as the ad once admonished us “to reach out and touch someone” we must, in fact, be standing beside them.

There are a lot of “right” opinions in this church. Many people are on, in my opinion the correct side of many issues. Much talk is done about issues and everyone -well, nearly everyone in Austin knows, that if there’s something radical that’s to be discussed in Austin, the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin might just be the place to hold such a meeting. That’s great!

What I don’t see in this church is the church as a body of believers, worshippers, people of faith moving together to do things as a community in this community. I’m sorry if this sounds nebulous, but community acting together builds community. The motto of this church is one church many beliefs. The stress seems to be on the many beliefs, and again, great, but community gets enacted when those who believe many different things work together toward a common goal or goals.

Fellowship isn’t something that can be conjured up on Sunday mornings, and neither is spirituality. Fellowship is something that grows from working together on common goals.

What’s wrong with this church may be exactly what’s wrong with the UUA itself. Ralph Waldo Emerson traded the miracles of the Bible for the miracles of green pastures and falling rain. But subsequent generations of Unitarians and Universalist stepped away completely from any sacred scriptures – be they Hebrew, Pagan or Christian. That stepping away from a center – rather, that center that was stepped away from has not been replaced.

Political agendas can’t replace it; social action can’t replace it, voting for the most liberal candidate can’t replace it.

Dr. Davidson Loehr has been addressing this lack of spiritual center in his efforts to take religion back even further than our Judeo-Christian underpinnings, and I think his efforts to think mythically – as it says on the door to his office – are commendable and laudatory. His derision concerning the seven principles can and must be seen in this light. Prophets decry the present situation in hopes of pointing to something that might be more worthwhile.

Davidson Loehr is pointing in the right direction. First, he’s showing all of us that there is no religious center in the UUA and secondly he’s offering more ancient substitutes. His idea of paideia – the Greek idea that what we do we do with the idea that the ancients are watching. As they watch the better angels of our natures will be more inclined to act so that when we are dead and gone we can be the ancients who look on the present with the hope that the behaviors that are happening in the present would both please us and make admirable those living in the present.

I think this church is strong, and I don’t mean Davidson, or Lara or anyone else who works for this church – I mean the members of this church and the feelings I get when I think of them individually or as a corporate body. This church has a lot to offer Austin, Texas.

Without Spirituality can there be sustainability? Around what do you rally people when you want to talk of how to treat this earth, what to buy, what not to buy, where to shop, where not to shop, how important is recycling – all of these questions and more are difficult in and of themselves, but when they are divorced from a religious/spiritual center they are almost impossible to answer as a community. Once again, if there is no religious/spiritual center to this community it might explain the failure on the part of this community to step up to the plate and make a definitive difference in the city of Austin.

I go back now to a meeting I had when I first got to Austin. Dr. Loehr and I attended a meeting of all churches in the Austin area to deal with the survivors of hurricane Katrina. The Christian Churches in the area were ready and willing to take people into their homes, fed them, clothe them and treat them like family that very night.

Dr. Loehr was amazed at this, but I felt differently. I knew the Scripture. I had had a Christian upbringing, and I remembered this passage in Matthew. “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did for me.” Of course the King is Jesus – so naturally the Christians had made room for the “least of these” because they KNEW that when they helped those people they were helping Jesus. You don’t have to believe in any of this to see the power and empowerment that this kind of Holy Scripture gives those who follow such teachings. And it follows quite naturally that the Unitarian Universalist had not prepared a room for Him or anyone else.

I don’t pretend to know how to circle the wagons in the UUA, but I do know that if they are not circled we will be studying them like to study the Shakers. “An interesting group, we will say, so why didn’t they grow and thrive?” The answer for the Shakers is obvious; they forsook carnal relations and quite naturally died out. The answer for the UUA is yet to be written, but it may be something as simple as they forsook relationship with something greater than themselves. But it’s not too late! It’s never too late!

Rabbi Shoni Labowitz in her book, Miraculous Living says: “Each time you stray from the path, you have the flexibility and courage to return. Return, known in Hebrew as teshuvah, was built into the foundational structure of the universe. The ability to return, to turn around and turn about, existed before you were created and is programmed into your being. It is available for you to choose when it is needed and you so desire. The teshuvah also implies a response: as you select to return or turn about, you need to know what it is you are returning to. You need to respond to the inner call with an intention and focus. As you let go of mistakes, you return to your divine nature, to the uniqueness of who you are, and above all, to reunion with an unconditionally loving God. In returning, you access memory of the void from which you emanated, with a clearer sense of freedom in moving toward the destiny you were born to fulfill.”

The point is this, if someone came into this church and killed a bunch of our members and then killed themselves, would we be willing to take food to the home of that murderer? Would we be willing to feed their family? And if we were able to do that, what would be in our hearts that would allow us to do so? When you find the answer to that question, then you’ll find a religious and spiritual center that is worthy of having the wagons circled about it.